


The Darkness that Binds

by illyriantremors



Series: ACOMAF Rhys POV Standalone Chapters [5]
Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: F/M, Rhys POV, The Court of Nightmares, acomaf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-08
Updated: 2016-08-08
Packaged: 2018-08-07 09:54:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7710616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illyriantremors/pseuds/illyriantremors
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rhys POV from Chapter 42 of ACOMAF when the Night Court squad steals the Orb from Mor's father while Rhys and Feyre have some steamy moments on the throne.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Darkness that Binds

**Author's Note:**

> Update as of 4/19/17: This fic has been updated! I have gone back to the beginning of ACOMAF and started the entire book from Rhys's POV. You can find this specific chapter new and updated _[HERE](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10671303/chapters/23621622)_. :)

The Darkness that Binds

For the first time in 500 years, I was nervous stepping through those gates. The Court of Nightmares was never my home nor even a place within in my own court that I took interest in ruling. The beasts it housed were cretins, the lot of them, easy to rule and I had enough power several times over to drown them all if I wanted. Wearing the cruel mask of the High Lord they cowered before was easy.

But today was not that day. Today, someone important would be watching. Someone I still couldn’t quite fully understand how she felt towards me, much less how she would feel after I’d exposed her to the monster that would be pawing at her in front of the court I despised.

Cassian and Azriel stood before me at the handles of the doorway that would lead me to my throne. Feyre was already inside along with Morrigan. I could hear the cutting voice of her father as they met, my gut twisting in revulsion. I didn’t allow myself to slip into his mind and witness how he was experiencing Feyre lest I slip and splinter him.

Azriel budged almost unnoticeable, hearing the exchange of words too. “Ready?” Cassian asked, brows raised at me.

Easy as flicking a button open on a shirt, I lifted the damper on my power. Darkness flowed off my body in rippling waves, so thick with fog that you couldn’t tell where the black of my tunic ended and the smoke began. The stars that swirled atop my head shimmered with uncompromising light weaving a thick crown even those sheathed in the darkest reaches of the mountain could have felt. I took comfort in the feel of it all, of releasing my true self that I so seldom was able to become. My oldest friend, the darkness that soothes.

I nodded at Cassian and together, he and Azriel pulled back the doors. I allowed them to enter first into the now deadly quiet hall where dozens had gathered. The ground quaked beneath my feet as I followed, instantly spotting Feyre where she stood with her face lowered as I had instructed her to do.

All at once, the room knelt.

“Well, well,” I said, soaking in the power I had over my despised court. “Looks like you’re all on time for once.” Boredom drawled from my voice, from the disinterested sway of my surveying eyes as bodies cowered away from my passing approach.

It was Feyre who stopped my blood in its tracks. Mor had done a number on her. She knelt in a thin sheet of black fabric that threatened to expose her most intimate parts, and for a brief second, we were back Under the Mountain and I was readying to ply her with booze to make her forget my wicked schemes. Guilt nipped at my heals as I stopped in front of her and gripped her chin with hard intention.

“Welcome to my home, Feyre Cursebreaker,” I bit, turning her face to me with predatory command. “Come with me.”

Feyre stood, the fabric around her swaying, and Cauldron damn me, my guilt shifted from revulsion at what I was doing to one of pure, animal instinct. I tightened the leash on my mask as the fabric exposed her hips, now so much more rounded and soft than when she had first left the Spring Court. Her breasts were high and soft, threatening to burst from behind the thin slips covering them and her lips - damn Morrigan for her cunning skill - her lips were full and red and pulsing at me to bite them.

A small, inviting smile not entirely meant for my court rose on my face as I sat on my throne and practically pulled Feyre atop me. My hands found her exposed rib cage, her inner thigh and began to run teasing circles over her skin with my thumb. Other than a small twist of discomfort at finding my fingers cold, which I immediately rectified, Feyre seemed… okay.

So I let the act begin, well aware my court was still kneeling and watching. I brought my lips in close on Feyre’s ear and half whispered, “Try not to let it go to your head.”

“What?” Feyre asked.

“That every male in here is contemplating what they’d be willing to give up in order to get that pretty, red mouth of yours on them.”

I tensed inside my head, waiting to see how Feyre would handle her first test, if she could stomach the ruse that so mimicked some of what I imagined were her worst nightmares from Amarantha’s vile prison sentence.

But then Feyre looked out at my court as if they were her court too. No fear. No revulsion. Just pure, cold command as she offered up a smile as slippery as the serpents crawling along the engravings on the throne where we sat.

My blood hummed. I had feared this day would ruin her, maybe even bring her back to square one with all the memories it was sure to stir in her. We still had a ways to go, but my confidence grew at seeing the deadly smile Feyre aimed at the kneeling fae. A smile I hoped I would one day soon earn for myself.

My thumb ventured maybe half a centimeter higher on Feyre’s thigh and she leaned quite noticeably into it and here we were already slammed so close together.

“Rise,” I said at last and the court obeyed. I dismissed them to their pointless charades with obvious boredom before calling Keir to the dais. Morrigan’s father looked pained as he approached. Off to the sides, my inner circle watched the man with narrowed eyes, Azriel worst of all as Keir spotted him and took in Truth-Teller at his back. The day Azriel sliced the blade into that man was a day that couldn’t come fast enough.

“Report,” I spat, nodding my head imperceptibly to my friends who immediately dispersed. Within seconds, Azriel was no where to be seen and I could feel more than see Mor and Cassian within the throngs of people.

“Greetings, milord,” Keir said with an even voice I didn’t think him capable of mustering anymore, least not to me. “And greetings to your… guest.”

I looked at Feyre, momentarily pausing my lazy sweeps of her thigh. “She is lovely, isn’t she?”

“Indeed… There is little to report, milord. All has been quiet since your last visit.”

“No one for me to punish?”

“Unless you’d like for me to select someone here, no, milord.”

“Pity,” I said, never removing my gaze from Feyre. Nervousness entwined itself through my bones as tightly as the stars stitched atop my head as I considered her. She would likely think me vile, irredeemable for using her body like this, but I had to do it to make Keir, and what would end up reaching the farthest corners of Prythian, believe our act.

With a fear I hated so intensely flickering in my mind teasing me with images of rejection and loathing to come, I reached for Feyre with my lips, lightly tugging at her earlobe with my teeth. Shivers broke out all over her body. Her stomach tightened, back arching slightly and I thought she was going to pull away, to run from me then and there in revulsion.

And then her limbs went limp, her legs widening a margin around my own, and she fell back against me, into me. I dared to begin the enticing circles of my thumb over her thigh and heard her breathe hitch, felt her core pool with heat. My thumb immediately stopped. Was she actually enjoying the touch?

Feyre sighed in an almost inaudible way and my stroking resumed. It was an effort to remind myself to nod at Keir as he prattled on and I lost track of his one-sided conversation with me.

Feyre didn’t flinch at my touch once. Her body melded into mine as the room became glued to us despite the music and the food. My index finger joined my thumb, sliding higher with each pass along her thigh even as my other hand grazed the underside of her breasts and I realized how hard I was falling into the mixed haze of deceit and longing.

Would she hate me for this? Would she curse me? It felt like a shade short of abuse what I was doing to her and the guilt gnawed more vicious than a sea beneath a wild storm when I took in the fact that she had no obligation to be here. I clamped the lid on my mind shut, forcing myself to run as far away from the doors of her mind lest I be tempted to enter and see the ugly truth of who I was staring back at me from her thoughts.

But I couldn’t stop touching. Couldn’t make my fingers find another restless land to explore. It was both a mercy and a grievance when Keir interrupted my thumb only inches away from slipping under the fabric at Feyre’s crotch.

“I had heard the rumors, and I didn’t quite believe them,” he said. “But it seems true: Tamlin’s pet is now owned by another master.”

Pet. Master. How far from the truth those words were. Feyre had no master even as I sat there luxuriously stroking her. But I forced Keir’s impression onto myself as I replied.

“You should see how I make her beg,” I said, running my nose along her neck, a momentary reprieve to my fingers.

“I assume you brought her to make a statement.”

“You know everything I do is a statement.”

“Of course. This one, it seems, you enjoy putting in cobwebs and crowns.”

Disgust laced his voice. Feyre and I both halted, our gazes snapping to Keir. I could have throttled him dead for that one remark alone, but Feyre was faster than I and far more cunning as she stared Keir down with wicked disapproval on her lips.

“Perhaps I’ll put a leash on you,” she said.

The demon working inside my mind flew back to the doors of Feyre’s mental shield as fast as he had fled only moments prior, knocking at her mind’s door with approval and awe.

“She does enjoy playing,” I said. “Get her some wine.” Keir left and sitting alone with Feyre a mountain full of eyes staring at her in her near-nakedness pulled me back into my guilt. I pressed a light kiss below her ear hoping she would understand how irrevocably sorry I was for making her play the harlot. It was the last thing I wanted her to ever be.

And that’s when it hit me.

Sorrow filled me to the brim. I shouldn’t have let her come. I couldn’t rob her of her freedom to choose, especially not after how cruelly Tamlin had treated her in that regard, but I could have tried harder to convince her to stay. Surely there could have been something I could have offered her, another task seemingly as important to beg her to stay behind in Velaris while still feeling useful. Anything to spare her this role.

I should have found a way to protect her just as much as free her. Sitting there with Feyre half-naked on my lap, I was no better than Amarantha. Still her lover. Still her wretched whore.

As if sensing my change in mood, Feyre turned to look at me, her eyes searching. I felt her mental shields lower a fraction, inviting me in.

What? I dared asked into the folds of her mind, but she wouldn’t answer. Not there. Her internal touch caressed my mental shields instead. It felt soothing and I couldn’t help but to lean into her. So I opened my mind to her as much as my fear would allow and her voice filled my mind like the melody of the music I’d once sent her, speaking a salvation I had craved for centuries.

You are good, Rhys, Feyre said. You are kind. This mask does not scare me. I see you beneath it.

The care in her words, the absence of all the fear and disgust I was sure she would hurtle at me from now on, shocked me so thoroughly that my grip on her tightened and I instantly found her cheek where I pressed a kiss of gratitude and adoration against her soft skin.

Feyre pressed in to me. Her legs widened again. And her next words undid me as she asked, Why’d you stop?

A low, feral growl almost escaped from me in an eruption that would have been loud enough to shake the snow from the mountains outside. Feyre felt the pulse of music around us and writhed in my lap, allowing my hands to roam and touch at my leisure, her own hands exploring my thighs. My inhibitions escaped right at that touch alongside her own as I went hard beneath her, consumed with want. I took deep reverent breathes at her neck, inhaling the perfume of her skin, imagining what it would be like to taste it all, to consume her with the full force of my body and mind. I wanted her more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life.

My mate. My mate. My mate.

Heat radiated from Feyre’s fingertips sending warmth over my thighs as she gripped me. Her thoughts swam with visions of the burning she felt in her core made manifest and I had to choke back a pleased laugh at how intensely she was reaching for me.

Easy, I said to her down the bond. If you become a living candle, poor Keir will throw a hissy fit. And then you’d ruin the party for everyone.

Feyre’s hands cooled, but to my utter delight, she flung her head back and pressed herself into the crook of my neck as I shifted below her. The sensation of that pressure on my skin was ravenous, the feeling that she wanted this just as badly as I - a divine glory to my soul.

My hand slid high enough on her thigh to finally hook underneath the fabric, dangerous territory, while my other hand cast a knuckle firmly along the underside of her breast, her nipples now very peaked. Her mind opened to me and I read nothing but the desire for more, more, more before Keir made a startled movement.

We turned to see the stupid prick standing there, mouth wide open, a forgotten glass of wine in his hand. Feyre quickly lost interest and I wanted to laugh at him for how foolish he was. I settled for licking my way up Feyre’s neck instead watching him gape at us. Feyre’s back arched.

I think he’s so disgusted that he might have given me the orb just to get out of here, I said to her.

You and I put on a good show, Feyre replied in a voice I never imagined she would bestow me with. It was heavy and sultry. I could feel it grasping for me through the bond. My fingers curled along her thigh, tightening in approval, starving for that attention from her. Her body twisted in my lap fighting to get impossibly closer when she stilled entirely feeling how hard I’d become for her every movement.

My breathe caught. I waited for her to pull away, but suddenly she was even closer, grinding on me and returning my earlier licking with one of her own up my throat.

Her scent was intoxicating, a rich, sweet liquor I could drown myself in drunkenness on night after night in never ending ecstasy. I wanted this. I wanted all of her. Right there on the floor in front of everyone until she would scream from the pleasure of how I felt inside her and we were mated, never mind the consequences.

A laugh of feline amusement that was nearly a growl flicked out of me. I trailed kisses across her shoulder, her neck, and dug my fingers in at her thigh, dragging them up, up, up until they met with a thick, sticky slickness.

Feyre froze the second my fingers touched the wetness dripping from between her thighs. I was so blind with the desire to dip my fingers in and taste her - fuck, what did she taste like - that I almost forgot what was even happening.

It’s fine, I said in an attempt to calm Feyre’s unease. It means nothing. It’s just your body reacting. But my words sounded ragged in her mind, even to me. Her body was reacting the same as mine had and still was. We both wanted this, but the contact between us just then had brought a very harsh reality to Feyre’s mind that she perhaps wasn’t ready to confront just yet.

Because you’re so irresistible? Feyre sounded out of breathe herself. Mercifully, Azriel returned at this precise moment, sparing us the discomfort of pressing the growing tension between us further.

Keir offered me the wine and I grabbed it with the hand that had rested between Feyre’s legs. It was a pain and a relief to remove myself from the spot on her thighs. My fingers ached to lose the new home they so enjoyed, but as I grabbed the wine goblet and caught the scent of Feyre lingering on my fingertips where I could see some of her slickness shining, my blood boiled with desire all over again and I knew one very certain thing: I was so fucked.

“Should I test it for poison?” I said to Keir at the same moment I told Feyre to go to Cassian. Our act was finished, but I sent her away more so to get a reprieve. Another moment on my lap with that scent catching me and I would have flipped her over and closed the gap between us entirely.

Feyre pranced away, the perfect image of the High Lord’s plaything. The room followed her as she made her way to Cassian, including Keir. He stared at her with rank distaste as she passed, his mouth parting in a foul line as he whispered words he thought only she could hear. How very wrong he was.

“You’ll get what’s coming to you, whore,” he spat.

Lounging casually in my throne, I unleashed darkness into the room to consume. For several seconds, no one could see an inch in front of their noses. The inky darkness whipped and cracked until I could feel it drag Keir to his knees. It was fear. It was confusion. The darkness that punishes.

And punish me just as much as Keir, it did. Whore. I’d made Feyre my whore. All of Prythian would soon know it no matter what I did to Keir to refute it. I wasn’t just Amarantha’s whore anymore. In a way, I was Amarantha in all her despicable manipulative ways for how I’d betrayed Feyre.

So I did the one thing left for me to do. I saw the mask of the cruel, evil High Lord of the Night Court everyone wanted to see twirling in front of me and yanked it harder to my being.

When the smoke cleared, I appeared on the throne as the perfect image of casual terror ready to reign down on Keir and break him for every bone he was worth.

“Apologize,” I said with lethal intent lacing my voice and yet, the bastard had the nerve to stay quiet. “I said, apologize.” Still he was silent, so I started at his shoulder and forced the bone to splinter four times down to the elbow. I didn’t even move a muscle to do it. My cousin stood in the far corner looking on with venomous pleasure dancing in her eyes.

Still Keir said nothing except to choke on his sobs. So I disintegrated his elbow and only then when half of his arm was shattered did he barely manage to mouth the words I’m sorry to Feyre between his screams. I broke the bones of his other arm for his lack of effort with a dangerous smile on my face.

This was the monster I hadn’t want Feyre to see, but Feyre looked almost as pleased as Morrigan to see Keir fall beside her.

“Should I kill him for it?” I asked to the room at large. No one spoke. “When you wake up, you’re not to see a healer. If I hear that you do…” his pinky - gone. “If I hear that you do, I’ll carve you into pieces and bury them where no one can stand a chance of putting you together again.” Keir collapsed and I ordered him away to his rooms, hauled off by some guard or other. I relaxed in my seat, feeling pleased that however I had betrayed Feyre, I’d at least been able to provide her with some small form of amends.

Slowly, other courtiers dared themselves forward on pained feet to fill in for Keir. I sat on my throne listening for well on an hour, but my attention swarmed with thoughts of Feyre. I allowed myself to look at her only a handful of times during that hour, but every single time I checked, she was staring straight at me. No trace of fear. No disgust. Her eyes were bright with interest, radiating the heat and warmth she had felt sitting on my lap. And her mind was open, basking in the feel of what had passed between us. She looked wild, alive with all her energy returned to her for the first time in months. Maybe even since I’d first met her on Fire Night.

My mind ran wild with possibilities as the darkness settled between us in our minds, watching the bond slowly begin to unfold between us and nestle. That darkness that waits. That darkness that hopes.

The darkness that binds.

xx


End file.
